A digital success checklist for charities (Guest Post)

In a recent blog post for Tech Trust, digital marketing executive Matt Moorut shares a helpful checklist for all charities looking to branch out on digital channels.

If your charity or non-profit is just getting into social media or online fundraising, it can be daunting. There’s a lot of advice out there, but sometimes that can be just add to the sense of “wow – we’ve got a lot to do”.

Social fundraising

□ Select a social fundraising platform.
□ Create a fundraising guide for your fundraisers.
□ Offer contests that reward fundraisers who raise the most funds during the campaign.
□ Create an email list solely for fundraisers, and throughout the year keep them updated on the causes that they raised money for.
□ Create a mobile list for fundraisers and occasionally text them fundraising tips and event updates.
□ Design promotional graphics for your social fundraising campaign for your website, blog, email communications, and social networks.
□ Create an ad for your social fundraising campaign for print materials.
□ Design a “Fundraise” button for your social fundraising campaign and add it to your website and blog.
□ Add your social giving campaign to your “More Ways to Give” page.
□ Send follow-up ‘thank you’ emails to social fundraising campaign donors with your nonprofit’s branding and social network icons.
□ Send follow-up campaign update emails.

Mobile fundraising

□ Select a text-to-give provider such as Vier 2 or JustTextGiving.
□ Launch a mobile alert campaign.
□ Add a mobile alert subscription form to your home page and every page of your website and blog.
□ Add a mobile alert icon to your website, blog, and e-newsletter and email fundraising appeal templates in proximity to your social networks icons.
□ Add your text-to-give campaign to your “More Ways to Give” page.
□ Create text-to-give and mobile alert promotional graphics for your website, blog, email communications, and social networks.
□ Create ads for your text-to-give and mobile alert campaigns for print materials.
□ Sign up for Google for Nonprofits and Google Wallet.
□ Follow and study the National Wildlife Federation, Humane Society of the United States, Human Rights Campaign, Greenpeace, and the American Red Cross.

Mobile and social content strategy

□ Write a mobile and social content strategy.
□ Create an editorial calendar.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into print materials.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into news articles and press releases.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into your blog.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into image and infographic campaigns.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into video.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into online petition campaigns.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into online contests.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into your online store.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into e-books and digital reports.
□ Integrate mobile and social media into smartphone and tablet apps promotions.

LinkedIn

□ Design and upload custom graphics to your LinkedIn page.
□ Add products and services to your page and request recommendations.
□ Experiment with LinkedIn Groups.
□ Ensure that all staff members have maximised their LinkedIn profiles.
□ Follow and study the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), Conservation International, and the Environmental Defence Fund.